“A believer has the obligation of supporting the other believer no matter where they are”, Sheikh Mustapha al-Majzoud said, “Victory awaits our brothers in Syria!”

On January 21 a Muslim group held a protest in Sydney´s Paul Keating Park against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. One of the speakers was Sheikh Mustapha Al Majzoub, a popular Salafist cleric from the Sydney region.

Al-Majzoub is dead now. He was killed in Syrian recently after he traveled to the country a few months ago. The cleric, born in Saudi-Arabia to a Syrian family, studied at the University of Medinah before he came to Australia and became a leading figure within the Sydney Muslim community occasionally teaching at the “Islamic College of Australia”.

Back in April the cleric visited Turkey and met several Syrian refugees. “I visited so far two Home hospitals & I saw live that which I heard or saw on TV, I saw a man with a lost hand & a man with a lost leg & another paralyzed & another with a hole in his foot”, Al-Majzoub wrote on his Facebook page.

In June Sheikh al-Majzoub finally traveled to Syria, a country whose people he supported in his sermons for months. “As I embark on my journey I sincerely ask Allah to give victory to our brothers and sisters everywhere I ask Allah to relief the distressed and aid the weak”, he wrote, “I ask Allah to unite us again at times better than these times. And to gather us under his shade on the day when there is no shade but his shade.”

There were no details given when Syrian rebels announced the death of Mustapha al-Majzoub. It is known that the Sheikh´s brother, Sheikh Fedaa al-Majzoub (a member of the Syrian National Council) attended the funeral.

Last November Islamist militants of Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) kidnapped three Europeans in the Mali desert city of Timbuktu. Among them British-South African national Stephen Malcolm.

Today AQIM released a statement offering the release of the Briton in return for the release of Palestinian cleric Abu Qatada. If the British government agrees to deport Abu Qatada to a country of his choice, Stephen Malcolm will be freed, the statement by AQIM reads.

Britain has been trying to extradite Abu Qatada to Jordan for more than six years now. In the Arab country the cleric has been sentenced in absentia for the involvement in terror attacks. Now the European Court of Human Rights is about to decide wether or not the British government is allowed to extradite Abu Qatada.

In today´s statement AQIM says that Britain will “open the doors of evil” if the Palestinian cleric will be send to Jordan.